When was the last time you deeply listened to someone?
Listening is essential to developing relationships and connecting with others on a deeper level.
We all love to be listened to in a way that allows us to feel seen, heard, felt and understood, when this happens we feel a deep sense of connection and fulfilment.
We thrive off of human to human interactions, and we thrive even more when those interactions are deeply connecting experiences where all involved feel seen and heard.
By becoming a better listener we will create more customers in our business, we will create more loving and connected intimate relationships, we will create more deeper friendships and we can become better leaders in our organisations.
Here are four practices to become a better listener:
Presence Is Everything
If you're not present in a conversation, then you may as well put your hand up for the other person to stop speaking, say your goodbyes and walk off.
Without presence, conversations may as well not happen. It's not serving to either person to have a half life conversation where only one person involved or even neither person is interested.
Have you ever had those kind of conversations where you are speaking to someone and they hardly seem to be there with you? They are looking around the room, or glancing at their phone, or checking the time on their watch.. It doesn't feel good right?
Presence goes far deeper than this though.
Listening is a type of meditation, when we are listening to others we are in a practice of quieting the mind's chatter, normally the worst listeners are already thinking of something that they want to say and try to say it before the other person has finished, they are also very distracted by judgmental thoughts and feelings whilst talking and listening.
So the best way to practice being a good listener is to treat it like a meditation, let go of your attachment to thoughts that are coming and going and "feel into" the conversation (when we get really present, we can normally feel another person's energy, like their nervousness or excitement).
Create A Safe Space For The Conversation
Creating a safe space doesn't mean having a specific place where you interact with people, instead it means practicing non-judgment so when people talk to you anywhere and at any time they can literally feel in their bodies that you will not judge what they say.
When someone feels they won't be judged by you they will open up in ways they have never done so before. Within the safe space you have created with your non-judgemental listening people can trust you deeply and because of that you will experience more depth and connection in your relationships with others.
Get Really Curious
When we listen it is essential that we are really curious about another person.
Not, of course, faking interest, but instead having a deep and genuine curiosity about another human being.
Listening isn't just a passive activity where we are silently taking in what another person is saying with heavy lidded nods in their direction, but instead it is about actively listening too.
Active listening is where we listen in a way that we can see that their are greater depths to what someone is saying. If we delve a little deeper with our questions with genuine curiosity we can connect on a deeper level.
Stop Giving Unasked Advice
Not many people really care for an unasked opinion or advice on something they are sharing with you.
People often just want to be listened to, when we share our problems or our challenges with others we simply want to be heard and seen by another. We want to feel that we are understood and that what we have to say is important to that person who we trust enough to share the information with.
Of course there is a time and a place to call someone out in a loving way, I am not advocating that we step on eggshells around others and never say what we really think. What I am saying is that people don't always need advice, many are more than capable of figuring things out for themselves.
In fact deeply and actively listening to someone can be far more powerful for helping someone than advice ever could be, for this kind of listening allows space for the talker to have introspective insight.
Listening is a practice,
Just like any skill it takes dedication and commitment to become great and luckily most of us will have plenty of opportunities to practice listening to others.
We can all become incredible listeners and the rewards are plentiful.
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